the_fabulous_unknown_cityfandomcom-20200215-history
Session Log
The DM's histoyr of the Sessions Session #2 The players, having journeyed up the strange cable-car into the mists, have spent a single night in the Fabulous Unknown City, meeting a few members of some strange gangs - the bird-masked surgeons of the Sanguine Execution Gang, the brachiating brutes of the Yellow Hexagon Line & the Fox-Masked Summertime Fire Degenerates. Mostly though, they spent their first session Getting to the city and camping out overnight - expending all the stores and supplies of trade-goods that they'd been sent with.. https://farm4.staticflickr.com/3783/13912860732_5dbc9066c4.jpg They'd arrived at the Yellow-Hexagon terminal - though they'd never come to find that out themselves. They'd never call it by that name in their time there - they'd simply understand it to be a strange & terrifying new place to meet strange and terrifying new people. The Fabulous Unknown City serves most often as a gulag in the empire, a prison for the most dangerous and undesirable people. Sometimes a deposed noble or an extra bastard of a high-house gets sent there, and sometimes there are explorers and surveyors - but the party all chose to be criminals and mercenaries. Eyonon - fresh faced and boyish! A naive sort without much experience or sense. A sorcerer of the Flower Court Barnaby - a stone killer, a hardcore prisoner that no jail yet has held. Rogue of the highest degree. Wincey - the Nervous, Mad Alchemist & Inventor Edard - the lunatic sent away by a hostile world - a sorcerer of the Dreamer Coven Vulcanus - the half-trulk mercenary, the steel-toothed marauder who was asked to go and not sent, and who went, for the sake of going. Vulcanus, wandering off in the night binging on the drugs sent along as trade materials - vanishes by the light of dawn. Fortunately he is replaced by another refugee from the cable-car - Diodenne - the bravest woman of all - who went to the prison out of love and duty. Together they explore the suddenly desolate region outside these grand abandoned structures. (I should point out that I kept using 'Tower City' & 'Pubic Square' & 'Windermere Station' as size references for them, but none of them got it - suburbanite car-drivers! They've no sense of the scale of things - and so, the mat and the tiles were brought out.) Inside the yellow-glass 'barn' the great Yellow Hexagon terminal is the spare, but pleasing and airy open structure - of a multi-story building composed of steel and glass and open within like a vast atrium - or, Birdcage- as named by Wincey - who spotted one of the surgeon crows going in and who wanted to pursue. https://farm8.staticflickr.com/7365/13936133465_c65b5dcdde.jpg It had seats like these all over, but with yellow hexagon patterns Once inside they could not but overhear the loud carnival barking and the rising cheering mutter of a crowd gathered at the farther end. A great large building - twisted and filled with soft furnishings and disturbed kiosks - the terminal is by a far margin the largest building any of them have seen. Without too much hesitation they approach the raucous scene. There is a tall circular desk, high, so that the tallest among them cannot touch the top - and mounted on the desk is a spinning wheel with numbers marked upon it, colors and an arrow - it is some kind of a game. On the chalkboard surface that covers the outside of the desk there are names and wagers noted - being noted by a Large & Boisterous man, walking with a limp and a heavy spear as a cane, he calls all to the wheel to gamble. "Chance! And Fate! Chance & Fate! Will you, dear guest in this borrowed house, will you? Will Chance favor you, will you be beloved by luck? Or does fate have a quest for you to fulfill? Will you be governed by fate and destined to win or lose? How can you know if you do not play? How can you know if you don't test your mettle against Chance & Fate!?" He's pretty persuasive this Lucien Yellowhay Arcingspray (one of the Sons of the Kannyltine, dressed in a military uniform, like finding a soldier dressed in confederate grays). The other players, of the game-within-the-game are present and ready, they've put in their secret stakes ("Your stake is secret but you can't stake a secret, here we game according to the rules of the pentacle - we only wager what you can carry in your pocket, and what've you got, what's you gots in your pockets?") The players are so: Profligate Spender – AKA Pro Spender (Spring-Frog Gangster Leftennant) In his huge green velvet suit and huge green frog mask, accompanied by his huge gang of enforcers and bodyguards. Numis Aurr (Cable-Car Warlord of the Red-Triangle Line) A big man, and a hard one, he's got the teardrop tattoos in the red-triangle pattern. Does he fear to tread on the Yellow-Hex line? No he does not, he carries his railroad-mace and swaggers with his thigh-sized brachiating forearms flexed prominently. His 5 member gang all the same, but meaner and quieter, they growl less and mutter barely audible curses, eyes on the windows. Fabulyo Drunkletes (Homesteader, an old lady, wiry & with a wheat-sprig dangling from her mouth) She's been around for a long time, in the game for to take her chances and should chance decree - take home a new pig or goat. Sunday Pentacles (a Zero - when they ask where she stays she points at her boots - long and lean, strong and clean, to her there is no in-between). Maybe she's got a heroic streak, and maybe she just behaves like any woman who grew up in a prison. Immediately she likes Eyonon and takes him for herself, there's a good deal of inappropriate touching and groping as a man born in the forest courting a woman raised in a prison are bound to have ludicrous misunderstandings and farcical fumblings. She slaps a bracelet on him and declares him her prize. They are together now. Morts Vigrous (Sanguine Crow - they followed him in, he plays barely at all, and is not spoken to or engaged at all, just the way he likes it.) The game has some rules is determined by the roll of the 20 sided - there are more chances for the house to win than the players - and desperate and without much goods to wager (my error, but theirs too - they never did try to gather loot) they only wager for the first round and never do quite win. Wincey starts a feud with Pro-Spender and it's only kept from bloodshed by the intervention of the many, many guards and heavies in the room. Edard - the only player in the second round manages to lose his stake - the party's supply of water - and finally recalls his mage-hand spell when he tries with his last secret wealth to participate in the 3rd round of the game. Foolish, foolish players... Indeed, when Sunday & Eyonon together win what is behind door #1 (a giant's corpse, 12 feet tall at least and decked out in martial finery - a huge sword and axe & all - and more than that, mummified in honey & wax (they find it to be full of bees - a giant armored beehive)) and Edard is given the choice of Doors #2 and #3 - he utterly spaces on the Monty Haul problem and summarily wins a goat! Of course, in the City, wherever 10 or more are gathered, So To are the Priests of Below, the Basement Torturers, The Pontiffs of Pain! Up from the basement they come - and the assembled gamblers groan in dismay - "There they come, to break up our fun, let's scatter and go." This idea is a winning one, or would be - but for the sudden reappearance of the Yellow-Hex monorail gang! They arrive on the cables hand over hand and their cable-car comes screeching up the line, bristling with warriors, the way out is no way out now! A melee ensues- the players have a good deal of trouble with the whipping, muttering priests from the basement. They're entangled and harassed and poor Wincey ends up retreating to behind one of the prize-doors to rock and mutter, fingers in his ears, hopeful of not being called to the darkness. For the unutterable muttering of the priests from the platforms below, from th winding marble stairs has in it a terrible compulsion - "come into the dark and take your beating." It says - and the vicious brutality of institutional authority prevails over Dodenne and Barnaby and Sunday - who all choose to descend and all choose to be whipped and harmed - this despite their valiant efforts at fighting off the priests - indeed Barnaby is a stone-cold slayer of men cutting them apart with his prison-shiv swords - and yet, he knows his place is in the prison, so down the stairs he goes. In the end they are absconded off - body-surfed to the electric canal. The lower platforms house canals, watery through-ways that are charged in some fashion with an electrical force. The priests take the players and NPCs in turn - giving them the DC baptisms. They're held to the water by the current and bend hideously and twist in agony - Fabuluyo, Sunday and Edard take their time on the Electrification Penance - The Railroad Trinity of 3 in the 1 watery rail. The others snap out of it and fleeing, along with poor, solitary Numis - the Red-Line-Rampager - they overcome the last of the priests (all dressed in tight gossamer robes of red and wrapped in chains and filled up in their guts with barbed wire) leap onto the canal - which somehow, miraculously holds them aloft and spirits them down the tunnel-road. Numis, taking his railroad mace with him, does likewise, vanishing in another direction. Wincey - fleeing the upstairs, hoping to at least die in company rather than alone in a closet - finds a metallic sled, steel on the bottom, vinyl cushion on top. It's hard to manage, but Dodenne is good at riding, she steadies it nice and they all ride the magic carpet of the electric canal to the place where it ends - at a tunnel collapse. There, they find a way up and out - a broken wall which leads to another chamber of different stone and different color, a basement broken into. Sunday and Fabulyo - both electrocuted and whipped, but remaining with the party know about this - a little. They lay out some exposition, at last, and the party is given some knowledge to keep. Fabulyo is a farmer and part of a farming league - it's hard work traveling by foot - because somehow the surface roads switch and change in the city - the lines and the canals all stay the same, but they're owned by violent, insane gangs, so she doesn't lightly leave home. Meanwhile she recognizes Sunday - "You used to stay at my farm, when you was a little'un." "I think I did, maybe more than once." They play a little game (NPC on NPC being a conversation I do tend to avoid) about who they know in common - turning out to be a large number of people- the City is big, but not well populated. They together claim that the basement and the realm above looks like it belongs to the Dusty Sisters - the Queens of the Boneyards. "Not too mean, but they're a lot nicer if you bring 'em a body to et." Says Fabulyo, knowingly. Session #3 Having fled the mysterious Basement Priests via the electric canal - the party finds themselves with few good options. Return the way they had come? Looking for another way out? But you can hear the chanting of the priests behind! In the dark! In the deep, stygian underworld? Even as they ponder their next moves, lit only by the occasional arc flash from off of the canal they can hear the muttering doleful song behind them, gaining in volume. Ahead of course is a rockfall, the canal's support having collapsed long-ago. But they've come across what might well be a way out - a break in the wall with a dug out path upward through old masonry and clay. Do they dare? Do they dare to do nothing? Wait for death? Perhaps this is the best choice. No, they go forward, Edard recalling that he's got just the faintest bit of mystical power remaining calls forth a cloud of fireflies, spitting them out of his mouth and giving just a little illumination. They climb the dangerous borehole tunnel and find that it breaks into another structure, also underground. Close-fit flagstones, smooth and unmortared. The ceiling is vaulted and the stones are smooth and ancient. It is still incredibly dark, unbelievably dark. The fireflies are barely sufficient to reveal their hands in front of their faces. It's no wonder they're startled and surprised by an enormous hideous worm. Like a colossal hydra: https://farm8.staticflickr.com/7361/14020620944_16038cbfc8_q.jpg It creeps up on them but Wincey, jumpy and frightened, leaps to attack! Tossing one of his firebombs he illuminates the scene just slightly, just enough that Diodenne and Sunday can rush in and snicker-snack the beast to death. Now, much more guarded, they continue on the upward path - the downward path of the stairwell seemingly leading toward the worm-creature's lair. Up is marked by a sign - a long rambling warning offered by... The Sisters of The Being of Nothingness. Who? Whoever they are they don't like the Basement Priests at all, and they've posted a warning along with some tally-marks, seeming to indicate that there have been some murders on premises. There's even a mean-spirited rebuttal, it's noted and gratified over by Eoynon - who's a mishmash of private jokes and confusion. They make it up to a doorway, and daring fate they enter - though beyond they can hear some singing, some grating and some whirring - weird noises! What do you do when you hear weird noises? You equivocate at the doorway until you finally go inside. What's inside?https://farm3.staticflickr.com/2904/14020320914_c5f159d6b5_q.jpg Why a dusty old mausoleum, all broken open and full of scattered, broken bones and rags. What's up in here? Who's to say - but in the terrible darkness they're not taking any chances, and what the heck is up with that whirring & grating sound?! Well, it's made manifest pretty fast - Skeletons! Kind-of. There are robot-parts, metal & wooden prosthesis - obviously mismatched and ersatzed together - they lurch around and rush at the party. Monsters! again... One of the prosthetic skeletons goes down like a tin-can being crushed under Diodenne's rairoad mace - but that reveals the terrible engine that had driven the skeleton! Some kind of hideous quicksilver blob with coppery veins and quivering tendrils. The skeletons go down fast and easy, but the goo inside fights on and is much more dangerous - they whip aggressively and where the tendrils land, there's a burning, acidic coppery sheen that clings to the flesh and eats through their clothing. Gross. Rays of frost and NPC intervention bring down the beasts - and it appears that under their quicksilver husks they're rigid gelatinous messes full of inexplicable liquid organs. Gross. The party is looking pretty weak - no spells, bombs or hitpoints to speak of - and half the team has gone down - between fighting out of the Yellow Hex station and up out of the electric canal the party is beat the hell down. Desperate times call for desperate measures - and they elect to entomb themselves in the empty tomb-drawers and hope that they can stop the bleeding at least. That course of action probably would have doomed them all but for the sudden appearance of Colden - the Half-Trulk madman who'd arrived on the cable-car with them. Raised in the utter-dark he's got no problem with the dark, no problem tracking people by scent and not enough sense to fear danger. He shows up and says, with characteristic nonchalance that he'll guard them in their sleep, all the while managing to seduce Sunday away from Eoynon by virtue of his avuncular shamelessness. It's decided that he'll guard, but he gets distracted and fights another of the prosthetic skeletons when the door it was stuck behind mysteriously opens. It proves to be too dangerous - and Edard, reckless as ever, starts opening the drawers to get help. The beast goes down pretty quickly though it brutally scars Colden with it's acid licker. Once it's down though they find that there's a room and in the room is a hole in the ceiling and from up the hole they hear some singing They call up insisting they're not evil priest (just regular type evil - just Zeroes). They're allowed up and once up they find themselves in an abandoned boarded up church full of emaciated women! Delightful. These women - who they believe to be 'Dusty Sisters' having heard this particular slur around, call themselves the Sisters of the Being of Nothingness - they sure do want people to die so that they can eat their bodies. But aside from necrophagy and a persistent appalling drooling problem - they're pretty friendly, going so far as to stitch up wounds. All the while they're begging people to kill themselves to avoid life - which they contend is pain. https://farm3.staticflickr.com/2895/13996747286_0fb517109d_q.jpg But drooling. And 'religious'. The Sisters live in this ancient church in the middle of a huge old cemetery. https://farm3.staticflickr.com/2916/14016670221_a39e11a876_q.jpg" When asked, they offer some exposition - explaining that the ancient builders of the city died off when their gods died - and that they, the Sisters, keep a vigil at each of the churches to make sure the gods stay dead. It turns out that the Sisters of the Being of Nothingness are guarding against the re-emergence of some kind of harvest god they call the King of All The Worms. They're troubled because it seems like it's coming back to life and they offer a boon if the party will execute it. Thinking they'd gotten the better of these gothic creeps, Edard promises to help them - knowing that they'd already slaughtered a big horrible worm in the basement. Turns out though, that was just one of the god's saints - and the team worries that they've bit off more than they can chew (more on this later). Eventually they remember to fetch poor Wincey from the mausoleum drawer where they'd left him - he cries pitiably and is comforted by the Priestess of the Being - Dodonnahttps://farm8.staticflickr.com/7418/14016670571_d6cf334841_q.jpg Who tries to persuade him to die, but is generally friendly - for a drooling ghoul lady. They rest until night, marshaling their resources before venturing back down. They make their side deals, trading goods between each other and earning a taste of the Sister's weird Drugs and medical skills - they further their own plots as the time to venture down and kill a god comes upon them. Down they go, with lanterns and torches this time - they follow the stairs to their end and find a door - they open the door & rush inside - drugged and reckless and straight up just Brave - they barrel into a disused storeroom - inside they're quickly flanked by a pair of the worm-saints, crawling over the walls to get at them. They lash out with their numbing tentacles - paralyzing Coldon and Diodenne (not Dodonna - weird how that goes). This leaves everyone in a very bad situation when the God of Worms does appear -https://farm8.staticflickr.com/7351/13996384336_da9afec4e3_q.jpg It yells at them, which is gross, and it sends out it's huge appalling tongue from one of it's mouths - they're lashed by the awful tongue "It's a big long tongue thick as your wrist with a big fingernail at the end of it". It does it's best to ovi-posit them with one of it's yelling mouths - but there is a scuffle and betweeen Eoynon's guns and Coldon's handiness with the dead-giant-beehive's sword the god goes down - struck finally to death, the god flops on the ground, it's detached head still screaming. Coldon, half a trulk at least, takes the head and eats it raw - only able to gag down the nasty flesh by virtue of it's anesthetic numbing qualities. the rest of the party finds the well equipped remains of others who must have attempted to kill the God of The Worms - and are suddenly made capable of feeding themselves for another day or two - much more palatably than Coldon, who is seriously sickened. And that's the end of their third day. I was pretty proud that the miniboss of their 1st level, the capper for their level gain was a god - not something I've done before. There's a little subplot unfolding about how those stuck by the quicksilver plasms are gaining memories of the dead - we'll see if that's followed up on.